Books and children—An open letter from a mother to her married children

Abstract

This paper was commissioned as an extension of the original letter which its writer shared with me because of our common interest and points of view in the field of children's books. With the paper came this comment: "You know, of course, that you gave me an impossible task. 'Be sure to mention the names of books,' you said. But you know that right there I am opening myself to all sorts of criticism, such as: 'She didn't tell us about any of the new books; she just mentioned the same old ones we knew about already.' 'But she didn't mention Dr. Doolittle, or Hans Christian Andersen, or Make Way for Ducklings, or The Borrowers, or The Hobbitt, or Robin Hood, or science, or biography, or ' So, I'm damned if I do and I'm damned if I don't. It is one thing to write an introduction to a book list that I've been compiling for 30 years—with the book list there to look at; it is another to try to choose books that almost any child might like at one time or another, and to keep the whole at article, rather than book, length." Bibliographic information is not given here, for it can be had from any good children's library or book on children's literature; this is a point-of-view letter, with for-instance citations. May other readers enjoy it as much as I have, and may some of them be moved to write further on "the right book at the right time for the language therapy child." People who want a single word for it sometimes call it "bibiiotherapy."